arcus's Cave was too accessible and too well known; but my knowledge of
the locality enabled me to recommend to my lads two other caves in which
I thought we might be safe. The one opened in a thicket of furze, some
forty feet above the shore; and, though large enough within to contain
from fifteen to twenty men, it presented outside much the appearance of
a fox-earth, and was not known to half-a-dozen people in the country. It
was, however, damp and dark; and we found that we could not venture on
lighting a fire in it without danger of suffocation. It was pronounced
excellent, however, as a temporary place of concealment, were the search
for us to become very hot. The other cavern was wide and open; but it
was a wild, ghostly-looking place, scarcely once visited from one
twelvemonth's end to another: its floor was green with mould, and its
ridgy walls and roof bristled over with slim pale stalactites, which
looked like the pointed tags that roughen a dead-dress. It was certain,
too, that it was haunted. Marks of a cloven foot might be seen freshly
impressed on its floor, which had been produced either by a stray goat,
or by something worse; and the few boys to whom its existence and
character were known used to speak of it under their breath as "the
Devil's Cave." My lads did at first look round them as we entered, with
an awe-struck and disconsolate expression; but falling busily to work
among the cliffs, we collected large quantities of withered grass and
fern for bedding, and, selecting the drier and less exposed portions of
the floor, soon piled up for ourselves a row of little lairs, formed in
a sort of half-way style between that of the wild beast and the gipsy,
on which it would have been possible enough to sleep. We selected, too,
a place for our fire, gathered a little heap of fuel, and secreted in a
recess, for ready use, our Marcus' Cave pot and pitcher, and the lethal
weapons of the gang, which consisted of an old bayonet so corroded with
rust that it somewhat resembled a three-edged saw and an old horseman's
pistol tied fast to the stock by cobbler's ends, and with lock and
ramrod wanting. Evening surprised us in the middle of our preparations;
and as the shadows fell dark and thick, my lads began to look most
uncomfortably around them. At length they fairly struck work: there was
no use, they said, for being in the Devil's Cave so late--no use,
indeed, for being in it at all, until we were made sure the fact